and driven to decide on a course without having time to reflect upon
it. Where is the man who would not have succumbed, even though
assisted by Cujas and Barthole? How should he look for deceit and
treachery where all seemed compliant and natural? What could old
Mathias do alone against Madame Evangelista, against Solonet, against
Natalie, especially when a client in love goes over to the enemy as
soon as the rising conflict threatens his happiness? Already Paul was
damaging his cause by making the customary lover's speeches, to which
his passion gave excessive value in the ears of Madame Evangelista,
whose object it was to drive him to commit himself.

The matrimonial condottieri now about to fight for their clients,
whose personal powers were to be so vitally important in this solemn
encounter, the two notaries, on short, represent individually the
old and the new systems,--old fashioned notarial usage, and the
new-fangled modern procedure.

Maitre Mathias was a worthy old gentleman sixty-nine years of age, who
took great pride in his forty years' exercise of the profession. His
huge gouty feet were encased in shoes with silver buckles, making a
ridiculous termination to legs so spindling, with knees so bony, that
when he crossed them they made you think of the emblems on a
tombstone. His puny little thighs, lost in a pair of wide black
breeches fastened with buckles, seemed to bend beneath the weight of a
round stomach and a torso developed, like that of most sedentary
persons, into a stout barrel, always buttoned into a green coat with
square tails, which no man could remember to have ever seen new. His
hair, well brushed and powdered, was tied in a rat's tail that lay
between the collar of his coat and that of his waistcoat, which was
white, with a pattern of flowers. With his round head, his face the